Mandela joins chorus of criticism against Mbeki's stance on Aids

Nelson Mandela has added his voice to the growing band of powerful critics who have chastised the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, for questioning the existence of a direct link between HIV and Aids.

In unusually direct criticism of his successor, the former president told a South African newspaper that he shared the "dominant opinion that prevails throughout the world" that HIV causes Aids, and that he would only change his mind if science proved "conclusively that that view is wrong".

Mr Mandela, who this week told the Labour party conference in Brighton that Aids was killing 10 teachers a week in South Africa, went on to say that public figures should not flirt with unscientific theories when so much was at stake.

"I would like to be careful because, for people in our position, when you take a stand, you might find that established principles are undermined, sometimes without scientific backing," he said.

Mr Mandela has previously shied from open criticism of his successor on Aids and other issues, but the former president had said that he believed the disease was the greatest threat facing Africa.

He said the government's focus should be on combating Aids through education and treatment, not on debates about its causes.

The ground for Mr Mandela's condemnation was laid last week by similarly direct attacks on Mr Mbeki's stance on Aids: South Africa's powerful trade union confederation called the link between HIV and the disease "irrefutable", and the Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, likened the government's refusal to supply drugs to HIV-positive people as "as serious a crime against humanity as apartheid". Some 4.2m citizens out of a population of 43m are HIV positive.

Mr Mbeki does not deny outright there is a link between HIV and Aids, but says it is just one factor among many causes of Aids that include social factors such as poverty.

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